Tag: Black & Wyatt Records

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Aquarian Blood Redux

(left to right) Jeremy Speakes, Michael Peery, Laurel Horrell, JB Horrell, and Keith Cooper: the latest Aquarian Blood (Photo: Sara Moseley)

Once you delve into their catalog, Aquarian Blood can be hard to pin down. Their 2017 debut LP on Goner was a rollicking, riff-heavy burst of punk guitar and synth noise centered on the hearty screams of co-founder Laurel Horrell. And while there were more minimalist flavors present, such as the moody “Won’t Forget to Die,” few were prepared for the sea change that came with their sophomore release. A Love That Leads to War was an abrupt, acoustic about-face that featured co-founder JB Horell’s delicate picking on a nylon string classical guitar, blended with low-key drum machines and hand percussion, spooky synths, and haunted, primitive melodies in a quieter vein. 

And yet the world the Horrells created was no fairy folk land of unicorns and tarot card poetry. These were dark missives from an underground life filled with trauma and desire, and the sheer sound of the home recordings captured what might happen if German sonic artists Can reinterpreted the Incredible String Band. It was intimate and compelling, and, with Covid striking only months after the album’s release, oddly prescient. During lockdown, I wore the album out. And, it turned out, there was more where that came from. In 2022, the band released Bending the Golden Hour, also on Goner, and earlier this year Black & Wyatt Records dropped Counting Backwards Again. Throw in the 2020 EP Decoys, and it’s clear that this acoustic chapter of the band’s career has been fruitful. Indeed, the three LPs and associated material hang together so well, I called on JB recently to lend some perspective to this impressive body of work, and what the future may hold.

Memphis Flyer: I’ve really been digging Counting Backwards Again since it came out in April. And it strikes me that you could call the last three full-lengths a trilogy. They hang together that well. 

JB Horrell: Yeah, I agree with that. All the music on those three records was created in the same period of time, between 2019 and 2022. And it’s interesting because there are songs on this third [acoustic] record that predate songs on the first record, and songs on the first record that post-date songs on the third record. There’s this specific body of music that’s broken up over three albums, and all of the songs encapsulate everything that was going on. And it feels good. Three is a good round number.

Is there a narrative through-line to the albums, or is it more oblique than that?

I didn’t choose the songs for the two before this third one. Zac [Ives, of Goner Records,] was a huge catalyst in the entire shift in the band’s approach and sound. Our drummer had broken his arm, so in the down time we were doing this kind of acoustic thing for fun. [We told Zac], “I guess it’s still Aquarian Blood, whatever.” And he was very encouraging. He said, “Well, you guys should try playing a show like that.” 

And then Zac more or less curated the first albums, correct?

Yeah. We gave him 23 tracks for the first record, and that ended up being 15 songs. Then there were 32 tracks we gave him for Bending the Golden Hour, and he picked 15 again. So for the Black & Wyatt record, we had 17 left, and I pared it down to the 12 that felt to us, in a very personal way, like the ones that completed that whole trip. That was a really brutal period for all of us, with Covid going on, everybody sort of disconnected, and a lot of personal stuff going on, like losing people close to us in terrible ways. So all that felt like it was of a time and of a process. It was cathartic, a process of grieving and sort of trying to figure out the way forward.

And the band was expanding through those years, as you embraced the wider sonic palette.

Yeah, it had gotten up to seven people. But coming into 2024, it kind of felt like we had cleaned out the closet to make room for new stuff. We knew that there was this imminent change about to take place, and we knew the band was going to downsize to five people, total. I wanted everybody involved in the new lineup to have a lot more of a hand in writing and arranging the songs.

So, since the release of Counting Backwards Again, there’s been another sea change in Aquarian Blood’s sound?

Yeah. We knew that we were ready to turn the page. We had a whole batch of brand-new songs. So we started completely from scratch last winter, with Keith Cooper on guitar, Michael Peery on keyboards, and Jeremy Speakes on drums. Then we took it on the road in June, and it was interesting to be touring, playing nothing that was ever released. I wasn’t sure what to expect about that. We had never played a show with that lineup before the tour! All of it seems counterintuitive, but the opportunity was there, so we jumped at it, and the tour couldn’t have gone any better.

Playing 17 shows in 18 days really locked it in. So, since we’ve been home, we’ve been hitting the studio quite a bit, and the recordings are just stacking up. Our intuition was right. We’ve got this group of people together, taking it somewhere else. The Lucky 7 Brass Band just put horns on some stuff last week. And Krista Wroten and Ethan Baker play violin on it. So the whole thing has become very collaborative. And it feels really good to get out of my head and out of my recording room at home and go out and collaborate again. 

Aquarian Blood will play with Vorhex Angel (with members of Jeff the Brotherhood) at B-Side on Friday, November 1st, at 9 p.m.

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Music Record Reviews

Turnstyles: Wonder Twin Powers, Activate!

While it seems surreal, the best way to imagine this year’s album by the Turnstyles, Turnstyles 2, released locally by Black & Wyatt Records and by Head Perfume Records in Dresden, Germany, is a bicycle built for two towing a garage behind it.

Technically, the band Turnstyles may not record in a garage, or even rehearse in one. But such details matter little when such oil-stained grease monkey habitats so clearly inspire the sound of this duo, composed of drummer/singer Graham Winchester and guitarist/singer Seth Moody (both of whom play in Jack Oblivian & the Sheiks, among many other bands). One can safely assume they both get under the hood, for this is a record as raw and scrappy as a hubcap full of bolts, loud as a glasspack muffler revving up in a closed shop.

Mostly, though, this garage is a place of freedom. One can try anything, and you can be sure that Turnstyles do. Sure, you can call it Maximum R&B one minute if they’re channeling The Who in their earliest incarnation, but just wait a song or two and soon they’ll be doing their best Everly Brothers-on-amphetamines act with “So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad),” an angular guitar riff right out of early Eno on “Over You,” or an especially dark take on surf music, as in “Suicide Surf Break” or “Dead Surfer.”

In the end, those latter songs are telling, for surf rock is at the heart of what this guitar-and-drums duo does (other titles on the LP include “Celebrity Surf Day” and “Sex Wax”). It helps that both Winchester and Moody sing, and can even carry off some sub-Everly Brothers but nonetheless ragged-but-right harmonies when they want to. That, combined with the duo’s ear for arrangements and penchant for experimentation, helps to keep things interesting. Even if some of these tunes are pop or punk, there’s a surfer’s heart beating at their center.

“It’s a city park in the depths of dark/It’s a shopping mall in the bathroom stall/It’s a petting zoo, eating barbecue,” they sing in the pop-infused “Twilight Side Boy,” shouting scenarios in rapid-fire succession by way of venting about some rejection. And while their attitude is pure punk at such moments, both singers’ dispositions belie even their toughest lyrical spitting, for this music exudes the playfulness of two kids in a candy store.

Even when Winchester adopts the perspective of a vampire, on the album’s lead track, it’s with such a sense of abandon (the music slamming like The Jam) and roller-coaster-level fun that it’s a world away from David Bowie, Nick Cave, or any goth wannabes. Like the group’s debut, reviewed here in 2020, Turnstyles 2 is an up album — even more so, considering that this is a double platter package, with 27 of the 30 tracks clocking in at three minutes or less, and some of those even under two.

This sense of abandon makes Turnstyles one of the most exciting live bands in the city now. Their sheer energy (and stamina) proves irresistible to most crowds. And soon they’ll be taking their patented sound across the ocean to Europe, right after they play their “Turnstyles Europe[an] Tour Sendoff Show” at Bar DKDC on Saturday, September 2nd, at 9 p.m. Catch these wonder twins before they go viral — if you can.

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Music Record Reviews

SIVAD LIVES: Reissued ’60s Wax by Fantastic Features Host Hits for Halloween

When most Memphians of a certain age encountered Sivad for the first time, John Beifuss wrote in 2005, he was “formally dressed in his trademark Lon Chaney-in-London After Midnight ensemble of top hat, cape, medallion, long hair and loose fangs,” and, as the soundtrack from Destination Moon played, he “rode into view driving a horse-drawn hearse.

“Crouching and smiling ghoulishly, Sivad then pulled a coffin from the back of the carriage and lifted the lid. Smoke poured from the casket, followed by a clip from that night’s feature.”

History confirms that Sivad’s entrance for every Saturday’s episode of WHBQ’s Fantastic Features made quite a mark on impressionable minds gathered around televisions in the ’60s and early ’70s. As Beifuss writes, “this introduction was scarier for most children than the movies that followed.”

Indeed, he so captivated the Mid-South viewing audience with his introductions to Fantastic Features‘ grab bag of science fiction and horror B-movies that he was soon a local celebrity in his own right. It was quite a coup for one Watson Davis (get it?), “a former advertising director for Malco who was much honored by his peers for his clever movie promotions,” Beifuss wrote. By 1963, an appearance by Davis/Sivad at the Mid-South Fairgrounds would attract 30,000 people. Thousands more would flock to other, smaller events featuring him.

And part of that experience was buying Sivad’s own locally produced, wacky singles. Now, Black & Wyatt Records has reissued Sivad’s 1963 release on the local Tom Tom label, “Sivad Buries Rock & Roll” b/w “Dicky Drackeller.” It’s a welcome development for lovers of all things spooky and camp, as the original singles have become rather sought after. Collector and author Ron Hall writes in the liner notes that he has “sold a ton of them” over the years.

What of the music? Surprisingly, for a novelty record, the backing track hits pretty hard. This has everything to do with it being recorded at the famed John Pepper Studio, where most local advertising jingles were produced, using some of the ace Memphis players that worked sessions at the time. They lay down a groovy little horn-driven vamp over which Sivad can intone his ghoulish desires.

Weirdly, he’s here to destroy what all the kids loved. “We’ve come to bury rock and roll and leave it here to stay…Dig me a deep dark hole in the ground,” to which an oblivious teen voice replies, “Look Pop, I’m diggin’!” And the groovy Memphis beat chugs on.

The flipside of this graveyard romp is an equally curmudgeonly tale of woe about Sivad’s arch-rival, a teen pop star named — you guessed it — “Dicky Drackeller.” Let’s just say Dicky the heartthrob gets the upper hand in Sivad’s dastardly plot, and we hear the track cut repeatedly to Dicky’s smash hit, driving our favorite vampire bonkers. It’s a prime slice of sound collage comedy, predating “Mr. Jaws” and other such ’70s hits by more than a decade.

But the real comedy gold is Sivad himself. True, as Beifuss writes, there was a healthy dollop of Lon Chaney in the persona Davis created, but the master stroke was blending that with his own Mid-South accent and delivery.

“To whom it may concern: There is no escape! My enemy has caught up with me!” Delivered with Davis’ hard country R’s, the dire news makes you want to laugh before the story’s even begun. And so the tale rocks on from there, but we won’t offer any spoilers. Best to drop some coin for this fine red-vinyl edition, with its extensive liner notes and cover illustration by longtime Sivad booster Mike McCarthy. It’s obviously put together with much affection for the caped host that struck fear into the hearts of the greater Tri-State area, riding on a Memphis groove.

The single’s release will be celebrated at Black & Wyatt Records’ Halloween Rock and Roll Dance Party, Saturday, October 22, 6 p.m., at Bar DKDC, featuring live music from Tyler Keith & the Apostles, Andy V, and Senpapi Red Moon.

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Music Record Reviews

Black & Wyatt Goes Global in New Comp

It bodes well for Black & Wyatt Records that their catalog has already been anthologized. And hearing the label’s finest moments gathered together in one place casts their releases in a new, impressive light, as Always Memphis Rock & Roll, a new collection of the label’s best and brightest tracks, reveals.

Part of the revelation in hearing this new compilation, out now on both Black & Wyatt and Dresden’s Head Perfume Records, is realizing that the label can no longer be considered a “newcomer.” It’s an established voice of Memphis that’s recognized globally. Five years have passed since the Memphis Flyer’s Chris McCoy first profiled the two Memphis doctors who launched the label out of a sheer love of gritty rock-and-roll. And yet the historical sweep of the compilation goes far beyond that half-decade, as Head Perfume’s website proudly announces tracks spanning “1956-2019!”

And that’s technically true, with the lead cut being none other than Black & Wyatt’s archival release of two takes of “Steady Girl” by the Heathens, a teen band who recorded at Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service in 1956 but didn’t make it onto wax at the time. Fittingly, Side B opens with Mario Monterosso’s reimagining of “Steady Girl,” also recorded in the very studio that Sam Phillips designed, 63 years later.

Those bookends are a good indication that Black & Wyatt’s heart is in the right place, a place of bacon grease and mud clods and the buzz of old amps. Indeed, hearing these cuts jump from one artist to another, one hears certain common denominators: great guitar sounds, with many varieties of crunch delivered, track by track; punchy songwriting that’s willing to dwell on the dramatic edge, from Turnstyles’ “Cut You Off” or Jack Oblivian & the Sheiks’ “Fast Friends” to Fingers Like Saturn’s “Candy’s Dead” or Tyler Keith’s “Born Again Virgin”; and a glorious preponderance of driving drums and bass. One notable exception? Ironically, a demo recorded by Jack Oblivian & the Dream Killers way back in 2000, the tough-yet-wistful “Loose Diamonds,” which sports only the sparest of snare-hits.

Better yet, for those working on their own Black & Wyatt collection at home, each track opens a potential rabbit hole, as it sends you to the albums from which these tracks are sourced. Such was the case on hearing Toy Trucks’ “Schoolbus,” which led me to marvel at that group’s Rockets Bells and Poetry LP, a power pop diamond in the rough. With Always Memphis Rock & Roll, one can discover such gems all over again.

Always Memphis Rock & Roll will be featured tonight, Friday, May 20, in Memphis Listening Lab’s SoundRoom. Albums will be available; music starts at 6:30 p.m.

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Music Record Reviews

Snowglobe “Does the Distance” with Vinyl Release

Snowglobe's Doing the Distance

The resurgent interest in vinyl is real, and apparently here to stay. Even as streaming services simultaneously make artists’ music more accessible and less lucrative, vinyl releases and re-releases continue to escalate, lending musical works a kind of permanence. “Vinylus longa, vita brevis,” goes the old Latin saying (or does it?), and for those who never stopped loving LPs, there’s no little satisfaction in knowing the medium has staying power.

Furthermore, when albums from the CD-dominated era are re-released as LPs, musical works can take on a new life, reassessed in light of the intervening years. And so it is with Doing the Distance, the 2004 sophomore release by local power pop stalwarts Snowglobe, which is now being released in its first vinyl iteration by Black & Wyatt Records. The album’s title could not be more appropriate, for the one phrase that springs to mind on its re-emergence is “staying power.”

For the many Snowglobe fans around town, this comes as no surprise. It’s been heartening to see their occasional reunions greeted with great enthusiasm, such as their 2017 appearance at one of Robert Wyatt’s beloved Harbert Porch Parties.

Snowglobe play a Harbert Porch Party, ca. 2017 (Illustration by Michael Arthur, courtesy Black & Wyatt Records).

Even at its initial CD-only release, Doing the Distance was much loved by those few who heard it. Chris Herrington gave it a glowing review in the Memphis Flyer:

These 16 tracks — recorded locally, mostly at Memphis Soundworks and Easley-McCain Studios — are more like a 44-minute rock symphony. Each song melds into the next and orchestral touches and instrumental interludes share time with more conventional song structures and locked-in classic-rock guitar solos…Cello and violins and sleighbells, mellotron and musical saw, layered vocals and subliminal drops of musical Americana, squiggly guitars and churning pianos: This is studio rock of truly intense craft that also maintains an air of spontaneity and playfulness. They aren’t late-’60s Beatles or the Band, of course, but Snowglobe honor the comparison. Certainly, no other Memphis band is making music (or ever has made music?) so casually dense.

Snowglobe (Photo courtesy Black & Wyatt Records)

Herrington hit the nail on the head with his classic rock comparisons, for undergirding all the refined aural candy of synthesizers, strings and effects are solid songs that rock righteously. And if the lyrics are a tad oblique, that only lends them enough mystery to have one coming back for more, the better to chew over their layered meanings. All told, the lyrics have a very real resonance with their times, alternately paranoid, despondent, and idealistic, with a finely-tuned philosophical bent that lends them a life beyond any topical concerns of the George W. Bush era.

Scanning the music journalistic universe, one quickly sees that this album has been discovered and re-discovered multiple times over the years, belying levels of appreciation that mere sales figures from its original release can’t capture. Fourteen years ago, gaming and entertainment webzine IGN called it “The best three year old album you’ve never heard.” Writing about this latest reissue, The Vinyl District refers to Snowglobe as “a Memphis indie rock institution.”

Indeed, hearing Doing the Distance on vinyl confirms that sentiment, cementing the band’s underground reputation as pop innovators. And, as if in recognition of that, this re-release will be the first subject of a listening party focused on a single album at the Memphis Listening Lab.

On Saturday, August 7 from 6 to 8 p.m., the entire LP will be presented on the Memphis Listening Lab’s Egglestonworks high-end loudspeakers. There will be a discussion afterwards. Attendees paying admission of $25 per person/$30 per couple will also receive a copy of the album.

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Music Record Reviews

The Turnstyles’ Two-Cylinder Engine Revs To Life

Duos hold an honored place in the rock-and-roll pantheon. In the ’80s, the concept seemed obscure, though the moderate success of the Flat Duo Jets and House of Freaks served as a proof of concept that duos could indeed rock. Before those bands, aside from folk duet singers or other non-rock arrangements, who was there? Suicide, featuring Marin Rev and Alan Vega, formed as early as 1970, but it was a keyboard-led affair. For that quicksilver sound of a guitar paired only with drums, you would probably have had to rely on North Mississippi’s She Wolf herself, Jessie Mae Hemphill.

The turn of the 21st century, of course, made the rock duo mainstream, with the ascension of first the White Stripes, then the Black Keys, to legit celebrity status. Many lesser-known bands have followed their example, but it’s still relatively rare. Which makes the Turnstyles that much more refreshing.

Seth Moody (guitar) and Graham Winchester (drums) both play in other incarnations, including Jack Oblivian and the Sheiks, so they know a thing or two about a good arrangement. They’ve played local stages for some time now, but it was only this April Fool’s Day that their debut, Cut You Off, was released on Bandcamp. Now the vinyl edition, pressed by Black & Wyatt Records, is out as well.

And the results are a true shot in the arm during these troubled times. If the White Stripes demonstrated that guitar/drum duos could be as heavy as Led Zeppelin, making much use of all that empty space between notes, the Turnstyles’ approach is to swing the pendulum back to the frenetic, upbeat sound that earlier duos mined.

Yet, for all that, the basic sound is just good ol’ rock-and-roll. The stylistic wheelhouse of the band seems like a less-is-more version of, say, the Flaming Groovies: basic riffs and chord changes evoking all the foundations of rock, from surf to country to Chuck Berry-esque story songs.

A few key elements ensure that these songs come across. For one thing, these guys are together, having tirelessly worked the club scene for so long, honing their arrangements. They can snap out of an unhinged noise wash into a tight chorus or bridge at the blink of an eye. Secondly, the guitar sounds are pitch-perfect. Perfecting a guitar tone is not an obvious thing, yet Moody has clearly done so. It’s not gimmicky, in a cruddier-than-thou manner, just a solid, gritty twang that can jump from country to surf in a heartbeat. Fourthly, Winchester’s architectural playing lends each song’s different sections distinct personalities, elevating the sound beyond some ill-defined noise wash. And finally, both of these guys can sing, so even if it’s just them yelling “Fish Taco!” in unison, it cuts through the wash and jumps out of the speakers.

All in all, it’s a great party record, propelled by their familiarity with the breakneck pace of some Jack Oblivian tunes. If the doldrums are making you feel claustrophobic, it’s the perfect platter to put pep in your step. 

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Music Music Features

Playing Opossums: Memphis Rockers Release New Record

CREDIT: Mike McCarthy

Opossums are medium-sized omnivorous North American marsupials, too often maligned because, well, they’re ugly. Frequently seen scurrying across the road or under front porches, the small mammals are best known for “playing possum,” or feigning death when threatened. Opossums is also the moniker of a three-piece band of Memphis-based musicians who specialize in catchy rock-and-roll songs, and they’re set to release their first full-length album later this month.

Opossums’ self-titled debut is being released by Black and Wyatt Records on glorious vinyl (and digital streaming and download), with a release show at B-Side on Friday, July 26th. Dennis Black and Robert Wyatt, pediatricians who met at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital and bonded over a mutual love of music, head the label, which specializes in plumbing the depths of the Memphis underground scene.

Mike McCarthy

Opossums

With their pop sensibilities and no-frills aesthetic, Opossums’ collection of 12 lo-fi songs is a fitting project for Black and Wyatt. Patrick Jordan sings with a nasal, proto-punk vocal timbre. His guitars are heard in snatches over the steady chug of bass and drums. “Patrick writes all the songs,” says Jesse Mansfield, Opossums’ bassist and audio engineer. “Me and Liv [Hernandez] get it together with the arrangements pretty quickly. We usually don’t spend a whole lot of time on anything. If we do, then we’re thinking about it too hard.”

Haley Mitchell

Mansfield says that keep-it-simple ethos is integral to the band dynamic. “I cover all the recording, mixing, and mastering of everything,” Mansfield says. “I don’t mix anything too extensively.” The bare-bones production echoes the origins of Opossums’ songs. Jordan’s songwriting lends itself to a sense of immediacy, which Mansfield and drummer Hernandez bring to life. It helps that Mansfield and Hernandez have known each other for years.

“Me and Liv are from Mississippi,” Mansfield says. “I used to come to Hi Tone shows a lot during college,” Mansfield explains. “I had in my brain that I wanted to move up here just because I liked the Hi Tone and Stax and Goner and Shangri-La.”

So when Jordan moved to Memphis from Asheville, North Carolina, with a guitar, some dark sunglasses, and a tape of song demos, he found a ready-made rhythm section in Mansfield and Hernandez. It didn’t hurt, either, that, like Black and Wyatt, the trio quickly bonded over a shared love of music. “We’re all a bunch of big record nerds,” Mansfield says. “We’re also really into British invasion ’60s garage two-and-a-half-minute singles that’ll blow your ears off, as well as all the various British punk. Big into the idea of pop songs no matter what the genre is because you can fit the pop format into any kind of genre if you keep it simple.”

Fittingly, the songs on Opossums are punkish rock numbers that get to the point. “Sharp Cheddar,” the longest track on the album, clocks in at only 4 minutes and 13 seconds. The band’s DIY aesthetic is on full display in the music video for “Left in the Ground,” the lead single for the album. In the video, Jordan sings, “I don’t really care about it, left in the ground,” as he picks a maroon Danelectro guitar. Mansfield rides an eighth-note groove on bass, and Hernandez keeps the beat in the pocket. The video marries pop simplicity with a dangerous edge: shot in a room with a coffin leaning in the corner and in a small field that the informed viewer might rightly recognize as the Bettis Family Cemetery — or the infamous Cash Saver cemetery.

But why the coffin? Why the cemetery? “I’m not totally sure,” Mansfield says. “The song’s called ‘Left in the Ground.’ I don’t know if it’s about being dead or dying or killing people. I hope it’s not about killing people, but I would assume it has something to do with that,” Mansfield continues before summing up: “Pop doesn’t have to be friendly.”

Opossums album release, with Rosey, at B-Side, Friday, July 26th. 9 p.m.

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Music Music Features

Rock Docs: The Story of Memphis’ Black & Wyatt Records

Why would two doctors want to start a record label? Ask Dennis Black and Robert Wyatt of Black & Wyatt Records, and they’ll tell you it’s because they love Memphis music.

Black is a pediatric gastroenterologist, and Wyatt is a pediatric nephrologist. They met through their work at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital and bonded over their love of music, particularly Memphis rock-and-roll.

Wyatt says even though he’s lived and practiced medicine in Memphis since the 1980s, for many years he was unaware of the city’s fertile underground music scene. “When I had a division to run, a research lab, and a family to raise, I missed out. My lab techs were going to the Antenna Club, but I never did.”

Dennis Black (left) and Robert Wyatt (right)

Black grew up in Covington and worked at the town’s radio station, WKBL, in high school, then for Memphis State’s WTGR “Music has kind of been my hobby all along,” he says. “Unfortunately, I can’t really play. But I like hearing live music, and I have a good record collection.”

“About the time $5 Cover came out, I started paying attention to Memphis bands and meeting Memphis musicians,” Wyatt says.

After he got to know several Memphis musicians through the cleaning company, Two Chicks and a Broom (“Valerie June cleaned our house for a fairly long period of time.”), he started hiring bands to play for yard parties at his home in 2012. The Harbert Avenue Porch Show has since attracted Jack Oblivian, the River City Tanlines, Snowglobe, and James and the Ultrasounds, to name a few.

“He’s his own little institution, with the porch shows,” says filmmaker Mike McCarthy, a Memphis punk pioneer whose daughter Hanna Star was also featured in a porch show.
“Mike approached me about wanting to put the Fingers Like Saturn album out,” says Wyatt. Fingers Like Saturn was a band McCarthy formed to feature Cori Dials (now Cori Mattice), a singer and actress he met while working at Sun Studios in 2006. He saw Mattice sing with her band the Splints. “They were good, but she looked like a Chrissie Hynde/Debbie Harry figure — lost in time, full of charisma.”

McCarthy wrote a bunch of songs and gathered keyboardist Shelby Bryant, sax player Suzi Hendrix, cellist Jonathan Kirkscey, and guitarist George Takeda. Then he put guitar wizard Steve Selvidge on drums, which, amazingly, works just fine.

Dan Ball

Fingers Like Saturn

“I introduced Cori to this group of talented eccentrics,” says McCarthy. “She jumped right into it.”

The band recorded at Sun Studios and at Selvidge’s home studio. “I’ve always played in punk bands, but I wanted this band to be a well-produced glam-rock band,” says McCarthy.

Filled with Memphis heavy hitters and held together with Mattice’s powerful alto, the glam influence is palpable, especially in songs like the Bowie-worshipping “Glam Lies.” But, since it’s Memphis, the sounds are more eccentric. “Satin (Pine Box Lullaby)” dabbles in Mexicalia by way of Johnny Cash. “Black Ray of Sunshine,” a ballad about the Black Dahlia, is an early example of the string-arranging skills that have made Kirkscey a sought-after soundtrack composer.

Before the eponymous record could find a label, Mattice’s career took her out of Memphis, and the band drifted apart. Ten years later, McCarthy played the recordings for Black and Wyatt. “We listened to the recordings, and they were really good!” says Black. “It was just a conspiracy of events that it didn’t get a wide release at the time. If we were going to do it, we decided to make it a really nice record.”

Fingers Like Saturn will reunite at DKDC on October 24th for Black &
Wyatt’s first record release party. But the label-mates are already looking forward to their next release: a single by the Heathens, a Memphis high school garage band that recorded at Sun Studios in 1956. Black and Wyatt plan to continue releasing a mixture of contemporary Memphis acts and lost gems from the 60-year history of Memphis rock.

“We’re not in it to become millionaires,” says Black. “We have our day jobs. We want to get the music out there.”

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Music Music Blog

Harbert Ave. Porch Show Rides Again, With a New Label in the Making

Robert Jethro Wyatt and Moke O’Connor introduce Jack O & the Tennessee Tearjerkers, Sept 2012.

If this city has music coming out its ears, with pop-up shows, festivals, house shows, buskers, and impromptu jam sessions springing up in every corner, none of these is quite as Memphis as the Harbert Avenue Porch Show. Held at least once a year in the normally staid environs of Central Gardens, the porch show has become a tradition that brings together generations and neighbors from all walks of life.

Fans throng to see Snowglobe in 2017

The brainchild of Robert Jethro Wyatt, the porch show is a perfect expression of its host’s love of music. Indeed, one might not expect such levels of fandom from a Professor of Pediatrics at University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, such a love of garage rock from a Pediatric Nephrologist at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital. But Memphis is a city of iconoclasts and mold-breakers. A regular at many of the area’s hardest-rocking shows, Wyatt has given back to the rock ‘n’ roll community every year since 2012, on his very doorstep.

Jack Oblivian at the inaugural Harbert Avenue Porch Show.

This year’s show marks the return of Jack Oblivian, who played the inaugural performance six years ago. Keth Cooper, Frank McLallen, Graham Winchester, and Seth Moody, aka the Sheiks, continue to serve as his dream band.

When the tradition started, as Wyatt notes, “the event was attended by over 100 neighbors and friends. Since then we have held at least one porch show a year featuring musicians and bands from our region. Over 250 folks of all ages attended the 2017 Snowglobe show.”

Some  were documented and simulcast by the short-lived Rocket Science Audio project, taking the porch show to international audiences through the magic of the internet. 

This year also finds Wyatt on the cusp of an even deeper commitment to local rock, as he lays the groundwork for a new record label. “Black and Wyatt Records is me, Dennis Black and Mike McCarthy. Dennis is the Research Director at Le Bonheur – but he goes back to working at a radio station in Millington when he was younger – and keeps motel rooms booked in Tullahoma for Bonnaroo every year. One Monday about 10 years ago Dennis and I flew to San Francisco to see the New Pornographers at the Warfield.” Mike McCarthy, of course, is the punk film auteur, community activist, sculptor, comic artist, and underground film auteur behind Guerrillamonster, the catch-all enterprise for his many ventures. He and Ronnie Harris have designed the T-shirts for this year’s show, and he’ll be involved in curating the Black & Wyatt roster. The trio are brimming with enthusiasm for their new venture, although, as Wyatt says, “I’m just not ready to give out hundreds of handbills this soon.”

The Harbert Avenue Porch Show featuring Jack Oblivian is free; a donation to the band of $5 to $10 is suggested. Free beer and food in the driveway (while it lasts) including beer Memphis Made Brewing. The music starts at 6:00 PM. Eat at Eric’s Food Truck will be on the street.
Sponsors – Memphis Made Brewing, Memphis Sports Academy, Goner Records, Utopia Animal Hospital and Dennis Black.